Kiev: Battle for Bakhmut is also taking place on social media
The onslaught of Russian troops on the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, which has been going on for weeks, is accompanied by a struggle for sovereignty over the interpretation of what happened in the battle. According to information from Kiev, this has long since been carried out on social media: the Ukrainian Center for Strategic Communication announced on Monday that Russia was using anonymous channels to spread ads on Facebook about alleged successes by Russian troops. Among other things, it is claimed that the battle for Bakhmut is “lost from the Ukrainian point of view” and “the West does not believe in Ukraine”. It is also spread that the USA is reducing its arms deliveries because “Ukrainian authorities were caught stealing”.
“The occupiers want to undermine the trust of Ukrainian society in the government by claiming that the battle for Bakhmut is lost and that our allies have left us to our own devices,” the communications authority wrote. After all, exactly the opposite is the case. However, during the war, the accounts of both the Russian and the Ukrainian side often cannot be independently verified.
Social media users in Ukraine have been advised by the agency on ways to identify such false claims. “Fake news is spread via newly created pages that have no description or content and usually have neutral names,” it says, among other things. The authority attached several examples of such false reports to the warning.